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President Barack Obama can achieve a magnificent photo op at COP-15. Although his poll numbers keep dropping in the U. S., he is still wildly popular in most of the rest of the world. The hundred-plus national leaders can gather around our charismatic President with looks of adoration on their faces, while hundreds and hundreds of cameras capture the unforgettable moment when "the hopes of the world" were concentrated on "the most important meeting in the history of the world." The fifteenth Conference of the Parties can then conclude on a triumphant note despite failing to make much or any progress towards a new binding treaty to succeed Kyoto, which expires at the end of 2012.

What President Obama ought to do at COP-15 is share some harsh realities with his fellow heads of state and the ministers negotiating here and ask some difficult questions. He should begin by advising them to step back and look at the history of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and ratified by the Senate later that year. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 created a regulatory framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Senate never ratified Kyoto. Nearly every other nation did. Yet, although global warming alarmism is close to a religious commitment among the ruling elites of the European Union and although the EU is raising energy prices (six dollar gasoline would be a bargain in most EU countries) and spending a lot of money to cut emissions, Kyoto is failing. That's what Karl Falkenberg, the European Commission's Director General for the Environment, admitted at pre-Hopenchangen negotiations this fall.f

What President Obama ought to ask is, Why is Kyoto failing to reducing emissions? Why is it nonetheless costing so much? What can we learn from this failure? Shouldn't we admit that Kyoto is a colossally expensive failure and do some analyzing and rethinking before we continue down this dead end? If global warming really is a crisis, haven't we learned that neither Kyoto nor anything like it can possibly be the solution?

There is another reason for President Obama to call for a global timeout on energy-rationing policies. The Climategate scandal calls into question much of the scientific research upon which the energy-rationing agenda is based. President Obama ought to include a call at COP-15 for a real investigation of the data manipulation and fraud revealed by Climategate rather than an establishment whitewash.

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